Using Puppet - Real World Configuration Management

Configuration management is the oft-misunderstood (and possibly black) art of managing your IT environment, infrastructure, and costs. Done well it can reduce operational errors and outages, simplify
…

Configuration management is the oft-misunderstood (and possibly black) art of managing your IT environment, infrastructure, and costs. Done well it can reduce operational errors and outages, simplify your environment, and help maintain the sanity of your IT staff.

Puppet is part of the bright future of configuration management for heterogeneous Unix systems. It combines automation, a powerful abstraction language, and uses a client-server model that can scale to suit enterprise-size environments. Puppet is written in Ruby and authored by recovering system administrator-turned-developer Luke Kanies.

This session explains why configuration management is important, the benefits configuration management will deliver, and how all of this can be achieved using Puppet. The session also explains emerging best practices in configuration management and addresses:

* What is configuration management? Or why am I here?
* Benefits, risks, and challenges: build fire resistant infrastructure rather than fight fires
* Best practice: how do we do this configuration management magic right?
* Where does Puppet fit in and why should management pay for its implementation?
* Why using Puppet will save you money and help staff retention (although is unlikely to stop world hunger)
* Real world configuration management using Puppet: code, examples, explanations, and using Puppet in anger
* Measuring the results and pocketing the returns
* Where to from here: some ideas about the future (may include wild-arse guesses)

30.
Modules
Collections of classes, deﬁnitions and resources
Portable and self-contained
Several collections of modules available online
for common conﬁgurations:
http://reductivelabs.com/PuppetModules